


Mendacity

by firearms57



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Catatonia, Coma, Comatose, Dissociation, Elf Culture & Customs, Ethari's just trying to be a good husband, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild rayllum i guess, Muteness, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Runaan's not really with it yet, Sick Character, and i had to write something for them, basically SR240 inspired me with her amazing ruthari fic, i added an art link because i had to ok, i think im funny, oh well, rated m because probably eventual smut something, sadnaan and yellthari, selective mutism, touch-aversion, welp no smut so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firearms57/pseuds/firearms57
Summary: “Runaan.”Ethari sat with chin on fist, brows drawn down. “It’s been two days. Did you even eat on your journey here?”Silence.“Right,” Ethari muttered. “How could I forget?”Runaan felt him move closer, breaths washing over his face. He couldn’t see — today, fate had not allowed him the gift of sight.“You’ve said no to me before,” Ethari said lowly. “But you know I always win in the end. The one exception was Rayla, but she was always more your daughter than mine.” A pause. “Anyway, she’s not here right now. It’s just you and me in this room, and if we go head-to-head, we both know who will come out the victor.”………“...Fine. I’ll see you tonight.”Runaan escapes coin prison. Here's the aftermath.
Relationships: Ethari/Runaan (The Dragon Prince), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 193





	1. Drift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SR240](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SR240/gifts).



> this is my first time writing something so psychologically-focused, and all the thanks goes to SR240 for being the best beta/editor in the world. Seriously, i haven't written this much in so little time in MONTHS. this has been a great distraction from the overall hell thats going on outside, so enjoy!

**If you like art,[here](https://azandcas.tumblr.com/image/612982941850714112) is the link to a sketch because I can't resist drawing the two of them, especially after writing a monster like this. **

He could give no name to the liquid darkness embalming his body like the waters of the womb. It had no feeling. Neither cool nor warm, neither dense nor light, he could not say how he knew it was there at all — it just... _was_ . He hung suspended, an embreotic figure in swimming nothing. He deduced that his senses had not left him, for he could still feel his body, the throbbing in his arms and the deeper ache cutting the muscle of his left shoulder into two distinct points of _pain_ and _not_. He could not see, perse, nor hear, through the viscous matter that he hovered in, as if his eyes had been slathered in jelly, his ears stuffed with cotton.

In the beginning, he’d struggled, resisting the phantom hands that tugged him ever downwards, but he soon grew exhausted, limbs aching, faux-breaths stuttering within ghastly lungs, and he let himself sag, gave in to the pull. He had a long time to think; an active elf since childhood, he’d never spared thought to what might happen should it all _stop_ , his duty, his home, his family, the world as he knew it.

Runaan had long ago made a separation between his home life and his work, the impression so deep he might as well have been two separate people. On the days he was needed, he packeted away the Runaan that his fellows knew him by, the fierce devotion and quiet humor. He painted himself in the colors of death, dressed in dark clothes and grim expression, and he became a Tool. Those times, he was naught but the queen’s will. And so, on that fateful night, he had thought nothing for himself, of Ethari or his home in the Silvergrove, only of his duty and the obstacles in his way — (Oh, _Rayla._ Had he really done that to her?) — and when it came time to die, he did not fear, for he was already dead.

For a while, he did nothing, lay still and grim, uncaring of the way he hung suspended in lush effervescence, the way the pain transferred over to this ephemeral realm of blue, spotted light, and the reality that while his wounds and the ache in his shoulder did not seem to be worsening, they did not seem to be healing either, and so he’d be with those pains forever. 

It happened, sometime later, because of course it did. No one person, man or elf, could bear the weight of it all, no matter the strength of their will.

His shoulders caved, his stoic mask broke to terror, his lips parted on a scream, and though he could hear no noise, he could feel it in the strain at the back of his throat. Pain and fear, the likes of which he had not even known himself capable of, shot to the surface like an arrow released. He felt fear and sorrow and anger, and these feelings were not limited to his imprisonment — oh, no, nothing so benign. He _felt_.

He thrashed and screamed against the influx of memories, unwilling to relive, to remember. He pulled against his bindings until he felt a shoulder dislocate, and even then he did not stop, heedless of the pain. He couldn’t go on that way forever, of course. Just as before, the body has limits; no man, no elf, can hope to win against the universal will. 

So he shut his eyes, panting like a trapped animal, willing the end to come swift. 

It did not. 

He shut his eyes to his childhood, the harsh words of his mother and his father’s disapproving shoulder. He yowled when he relived his first kill, the confusion and the guilt that came afterwards, the hard corrections of his teacher, and the laying of the first bricks of his walls. He felt the glow of acceptance when surrounded by his fellows, the passion of joined anger when he learned about his kingdom and the truth of its fate. He saw dark magic and the way its poison tendrils infected lives; he felt the smolderings of hate. _Ethari_ . He remembered Ethari — how could he not? That was perhaps the worst of all, reliving the utter _terror_ of that realization that his feelings went deeper than surface-level, the stumbling back and forth he played, the fear that Ethari was not even a partner but a looming spectator, chuckling at his incompetence.

Somewhere, amidst it all, he broke. The memories swirled together into a series of fractured images, faces swirling, bodies morphing, Ethari becoming Lain becoming Tiadrin becoming Rayla becoming the whole of Silvergrove. Pride becoming uncertainty becoming pain becoming _failure_ . He’d _failed_. 

This sat with him, the single Truth in a pit of confusion, the broken thread holding together the pieces of his mind. 

And such was what he became.

*

_“What is that?”_

_“It’s just a coin, but Viren kept it close, so I thought it might be important —”_

_“Give me that.”_

_“Whoah, okay!”_

_She peered down at the metal, turning the surface over in her hands, catching it in the reflecting light. She seemed to find something in the metal, for she flinched harshly and sucked in a breath._

_Intrigued, he pushed to look closer. “What is it?”_

_He came just in time to hear her murmur “Moon Mother” under her breath before he wrested the coin from her suddenly limp fingers._

_“What is it?” he repeated, inspecting it for himself. There was nothing there but the smooth copper face of unminted money. He was about to return it to her, confused, when the light caught on the surface, momentarily lighting it and something_ beyond _._

_He cursed, nearly dropping the coin, twisting it about to get a better look. “God. How did he —?”_

_He seemed to realize something an instant later, and his eyes shot to Rayla._

_A pause. A stuttering inhale._

_“_ Runaan _?”_

_“You have to, Callum.”_

_“Rayla.”_

_She could hear the strain in his voice, and she fought down tears, willing herself to stay calm. “If not for him, do it for me, Callum. Do it for_ Ethari _.”_

_He was silent for a long time, and the urge to cry came again, harder to fight this time. Something on her face must have broken through to him, for he clambered to his feet, muttering under his breath._

_She didn’t move, barely dared to breathe._

_Still, the silence was poignant, and he spat an irritated “What?” over his shoulder as he passed._

_She swallowed, smothering the traitorous spark of hope that blossomed in her breast. “Where — where are you going?”_

_“To get Ibis_ . _”_

*

When enough time had passed, he came to think of the nothingness as somethingness, just to keep himself from going mad, for if he was surrounded by nothing, then _he_ was nothing. Still, this did nothing to aid in his steadily growing madness, the softened edges of cognizance and the laxness of his thoughts. He no longer thought in concrete sentences, but painted images, mind gone feral.

It was like a malnourished child, hungering to play, to bond, to interact, and so when the Change came, it eagerly latched on, like a babe given its first finger to hold. He felt the Change first as an irritating tug at his consciousness, like a tap on the shoulder, soft but just hard enough to get his attention. Like a wearied beast, curiosity raised its head, roused from its slumber by the knocking at his consciousness. The Change rummaged around a bit, as if searching for something, moving from head to foot then back again. It settled finally in his breast, seeming satisfied, and tugged one final time.

That was the last warning he got before the pain came, quick and brutal as the slash of a knife. It seared across his mind with all the ferocity of a fighting cat, sharp-edged thorns latching onto his being and _pulling_. He howled, for the pain went further than the flesh. It felt as though his very soul was being pulled from his not-body, and the countless hours he’d let himself slip down through the nothing were being wrested from him as slowly, acidly, he was pulled back up towards the light.

He fought with every scrap of strength he had, baring his teeth, muscles flexing, thickening the fortifications around his mind, body and soul. The outcome was the same as it was every time, for, as mentioned above, no man, and no elf, has the strength to fight universal will.

It was not peacefully that Runaan succumbed to darkness.

*

Callum fell, exhausted, to the stone floor in their room of the Storm Spire, looking like he’d sprinted up a mountain.

Rayla dropped to her knees beside him, the figure on the floor momentarily forgotten in favor of the more current problem. “Are you alright?” she asked with barely contained worry.

Callum nodded, then grimaced, bringing a hand to his head. “Dizzy,” he said. “Thirsty.”

Rayla was on her feet in an instant. “Let me get you some —”

Callum’s hand shot out, halting her with a hand to the wrist. “Don’t,” he said, the faintest of smiles on his lips. He nodded to the misshapen form on the ground. “See to him first.”

He could see the warring emotions on her face, and he gave her a gentle nudge. “I’ll be fine, Rayla.”

As quick as that, the decision was made, and she was gone from his side in favor of another’s. She looked upon Runaan as one might look upon a fallen god, reverent, almost fearful. She raised her hand to touch him, and he could see it shaking even from here. 

She rolled him onto his side so she could better see him, checked for a pulse, first in his wrist, then in his throat. She shot upright, swallowed.

“What?” Callum asked, fearing the worst.

She said instead, “He’s alive.”

Callum stared at her, confused at the stricken look on her face. “Isn’t that good?”

Her brow furrowed “Yes, of course. Of course it’s good, I just —” She looked down and fiddled with her fingers, a habit he’d found she got into from her time with the binding ribbon. “I just want everyone to be happy,” she choked out finally.

It took him a moment to parse her meaning. Moonshadows had a roundabout way of speaking when it came to their emotions, but eventually her worry dawned on him, and his expression softened.

“Rayla.” He struggled to push himself upright, settling for elbows beneath his chest. “Rayla, I did this because I _wanted_ to. I decided your happiness was more important to me than whatever silly grudge I harbored since childhood, and I did this for you.”

“It’s not just a ‘silly grudge,’ Callum!” she cried. “He tried to kill your brother. He killed your _father_ , but he’s _my_ father, and I don’t know how to deal with that.” 

She turned her face away, eyes brimming traitorously, and Callum wished he had the strength to go to her. 

“Hey,” he said softly. “We’ll figure it out.”

He wished the words didn’t sound so hollow.

*

They were making camp when it happened. The shadowpaw noticed before they did, great head lifting to scent the air, ears perking. Rayla, noticing its change in behavior, was immediately on guard. She stopped messing with the tinder, handed off the shadowpaw’s reins to Callum and drew her blades. She dropped halfway into a crouch before moving slowly into the surrounding trees. She disappeared quickly, swallowed by the evening shadow, leaving Callum alone.

Callum shifted nervously, the leather slipping with the sweat in his hands, and glanced to Runaan’s prone form, masked in the shadow of the low tent he’d fumbled together after an hour without Rayla’s assistance. He had not moved for the entirety of their four day journey across the heated jungle, save for the few times he’d shifted in the throes of a nightmare. His face would tense up, and his body would jerk, restless as a horse tethered at the mouth. Sometimes, he’d make noise; they were never pleasant. Callum could not imagine it. Sleep was a haven, and to be trapped within it, unable to find peace, seemed more torture than blessing.

When a few moments passed, and Rayla still had not returned, he decided it was better to do something useful than to sit around wasting time. He tied the shadowpaw to a nearby tree, kindled the fire with only a little bit of difficulty, and set about finding some herbs to stew the last of their meat. 

The water had just started to boil when the surrounding brush rustled, pulling a startled noise from his throat. Rayla never made noise unless she wished to, so he was less frightened than he might have been. When he saw her emerge from the shadows unharmed and with swords free of blood, he breathed a sigh of relief, thankful for their good fortune, and when a second, larger figure followed, his relief was replaced by surprise so fast, he almost fell on his face in shock.

Dread rapidly overcame shock as he realized what this meeting meant, and he scuttled in front of the tent’s entrance as subtly as he could, hoping to shield Runaan from view. 

A sad hope. 

“Ethari,” he said in a voice filled with false cheer. “What are you doing here, so _far_ from the Silvergrove?” 

“Where is he?” Ethari said in a voice very different from the gentle brogue Callum remembered from his first visit. He sounded tired. And angry. 

“Who?” Callum cleared his throat. “I mean, it’s so good to see you. You’re probably happy to see Rayla, but —”

“Callum.” Rayla’s voice was soft. “He knows.”

Callum deflated. “Oh.” He sighed heavily and shifted away from the tent’s entrance. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s in there.” 

Ethari immediately moved to step inside, but Callum stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“What?” Ethari snapped, and Callum flinched. 

“I just — You should know he’s not in the best shape.” 

Ethari’s face shifted with emotions like the turning of a kaleidoscope. It settled in rage. “You think I don’t know that?” he said. “I’ve seen what your magic does to our kind. He’s seen the worst of it. Your high mage found him, and I thought he’d —”

Ethari choked, raising a hand to his mouth, and jerked his face away. 

Callum felt more sorrow than offense. 

“Come on, Callum.” Gentle hands pulled him away. “Let’s give them some privacy.”

*

 _Ethari took to visiting the lotus pond in the evenings. He made it a ritual of sorts, a walk around the village and a lap past the pool. He passed it by with the barest of looks, for if he looked too close he might relive_ that day _again, when the flowers sank and the realization came._

_He’d done just this and was in middle of hurrying by when he caught the glassy gleam of blue in the corner of his eye._

_He stopped._

_It couldn’t be..._

_He was down the marbled steps and kneeling beside the pool in moments. He stared at the bobbing flower, still wearing a smattering of water droplets from its time spent slumbering beneath the surface. It seemed almost to be laughing at him, the slow bobbing motion of the waves like shoulders shaking in mirth. He brought a hand to his forehead and slowly sank back onto his haunches._

_Runaan’s flower looked back at him merrily, spinning a circle in the pond’s center._

_Ethari’s bellowing laugh startled the birds a mile outside the Silvergrove._

*

When he was sure they’d gone, the sound of their footsteps fading to nothing, Ethari finally let himself look down to the figure he’d been pretending wasn’t there for the better part of two minutes. Runaan had seen better days. Ethari almost laughed at the absurdity of his own thoughts. _Better days._ Runaan had seen better _years_ , ones that did not involve him being bound within incorporeal prison, isolated from the world and his sanity for months on end.

The laughter bubbled out of him as he finally, _finally_ , fell to the ground, knees buckling from the weight of a body that suddenly felt too heavy to support. 

He was here. After all that, all the years he spent a widower, mourning, convincing the people around him that he was fine (no, _really_ , he was fine), struggling to find his feet and functioning as effectively as a horse with half its legs, he was here. 

It was infuriating.

It was wonderful.

Ethari lay down beside Runaan and wept. Great, heavy sobs, full-bodied and deep. His were the sounds of a dying animal, bestial and devastated, culled from so deep they hurt. He buried his nose in the soft skin of Runaan’s nape, breathing in his scent, mindless of the tears that surely smeared along his skin. 

A sudden smile split his lips, the stretch painful. “It’s a good thing you’re asleep, my love,” he choked out.

Runaan hated it when he cried.

He reached out a hand, unsurprised to see it shaking, and lay it across Runaan’s shoulder. His exhale was choppy. 

_Real_ . It was not a dream. He’d had enough of those to know the difference between when his hand fell through a cold apparition and _this_. 

The tears started anew. 

*

The Silvergrove was in uproar. Rayla could not make all of it out over the shouting, but she could parse certain things through repetition. 

Runaan’s flower had resurfaced five days ago, and that had never happened before. _Ever_. More startling than that fact by itself was the fact that Ethari had lied to save his husband a ghosting. When he’d seen the flower on his daily lap around, he’d frisked it from its place in the pond and brought it to his home. It was only three days of frantic pacing later that he decided to tell the village council. By informing them of his decision to take his leave, perhaps indefinitely, until he found Runaan. The council had threatened him with a ghosting themselves, to which Ethari had responded, in none too many words, “Up yours.”

It seemed their threat had been just that — a threat — for the hordes of elves that greeted him with mouths agape could certainly see him, and he could certainly see _their_ expressions, varying vastly between shock and delight. 

More than once, Rayla heard someone asking if Ethari could bring back _their_ lost loved ones as he’d brought back Runaan.

Ethari ignored the lot of them with a stoicism she might have found worrying were the situation anything but what it was. Beyond their first wearied encounter, she had yet to see him show the slightest hint of softer emotion. She suspected he was putting on a face, and it was working swimmingly. 

Though they stared, hushed and in awe, none dared step close to their odd little entourage, the crowds parting around them all along their route to the house.

Callum led the shadowpaw, now free of its charge, trailing a lick behind her. From the corner of her eye, Rayla watched Ethari and the precious load in his arms. Despite the able shadowpaw and the sorry state Ethari himself was in, Ethari had insisted on carrying Runaan. From where she looked at him, she could see the way his jaw clenched at the strain and marveled, found her eyes lingering on the loose lines of his body. She could see he’d lost weight in the months since her departure, clothing doing a poor job of hiding the new shadow at his throat and ribs. His face was void of its familiar shine, and his marks had lost their luster. Her heart clenched to see him so far from the man she’d known, and she looked away.

The journey up the steps of her childhood home was a silent one. Callum wandered off to find the stables, shadowpaw following obediently. Rayla trailed behind Ethari as meekly as she could, climbing the steps up the great tree as quietly as she knew how. Rather than familiar, she felt like an intruder, coming in where she was not wanted. Ethari had not bothered to make her feel any different, offering no words of greeting, no reassuring smile. His focus was singular. 

Ethari opened the door to his home without fanfare, marching straight down the hall towards the steps. Rayla was left to shut the door in his wake, then stood in the foyer for a while, She heard soft sounds coming from the bedroom upstairs, and she ducked her head, feeling again like she was encroaching on something private. Clenching her jaw, she made her way to the couch in the long living room and sat herself down. She exhaled, letting some of the tension fall from her shoulders. It was nice to sit in a proper seat after so long on the road.

Callum made his way into the room some time later. She heard the door open and close and was roused from the dreamlike state she’d fallen into. She offered him a tired smile when he entered the doorway, scooting over to offer him the seat beside her. 

He took it graciously.

They were quiet for a while.

“Do you think he’ll be alright?” Callum asked, and though his voice was quiet, Rayla couldn’t help but glance up towards the rooms above.

“Runaan, or Ethari?” she murmured, gaze still upraised. She answered before he could. “Both? Neither? I don’t know.” She exhaled harshly, letting her eyes drop along with the rest of her. “I’ve never seen either of them like this,” she said. “Ethari has always been a gentle presence, but he’s...different. Runaan’s always been strong, confident, but _obviously_ , I know he’s not that.” She made a broad gesture with her hand, seeming to struggle with her words. Finally, she said, “He’s different, too.”

There was the barest flicker of heartbreak in her eyes. 

Callum caught it.

“Hey, you’ll be alright,” he said, ignoring the irony of his own words. “You’re strong.”

“I know I will be,” she said, and her face was now almost entirely turned from his, just the quick motion of her lips and the corner of an ear visible through her hair. She swiped at her nose and sniffed. “I’m always alright. Sometimes I think something must be wrong with me. How can I be okay when everyone else _isn’t_? Takes a real heartless monster, huh?”

Callum scooted closer and pulled her into his arms. She fell against him as he knew she would, and he chuckled into her hair. “Heartless monsters are known to put aside their pride and beg for a loved one’s life, then?”

“Maybe,” she whispered, “I’m a new kind, a good kind.”

“Makes sense.” He pressed his lips to her ear. “You’re good _and_ kind.” 

She shoved him halfheartedly, though she made no effort to escape his embrace. “Stupid prince. I don’t want your puns.”

“Too _good_ for them?” 

“Okay, actually shut up now.”

*

Runaan woke screaming. He did not hear the pounding up the staircase, nor the frantic footsteps from down the hallway. He did not hear the doorknob rattle and creak, feel the door slam against the wall and swing back from the force. He did not notice the disheveled figure kneeling at his bedside. He could not hear his name falling from his lips: “Runaan.”  
 _Could not._ _  
__“Runaan.”_  
Couldnotcouldnotcouldnot

His mind felt muzzy, vision blurring, and he could barely register the blurring figure in front of him through the ringing in his ears. It wasn’t a face before him but a mess of foggy shapes. A halo of angelic white, a sea of russet and gold, soft brown and deeper shades of black. In the end it was his eyes that he found, twin pools of amber, and from there, he made out the rest of the face. 

A low whine fell from his lips, and he shut his eyes to the world, hoping that the dark would bring him peace. In his haste, he forgot that the dark was also the window to the Other Place, that same place where he’d floated in ephemeral adhesive, and he’d lost sense of his name and his home and all that had made up his self. In this Place, he was not Runaan. He was a shadowed wraith, an Other. Nothing. 

Warm hands brushed along his flesh, tracing up and down the curving marks that ran along his forearms.

His eyes snapped open and he was screaming again before he could stop himself, and he _pushed_ with all his might, the bed rocking with the violence of his motion, and he had to get those hands off him _now_ because he didn’t know what would happen if they kept touching him like that, warm and soft and _wrong_ (no, it should feel right, it should feel _good_ ) —

 _Breathe_.

A low curse brought him from his reverie, and he looked up through glassy eyes to see his beloved on the floor, fallen on his ass, clutching his side in a white-knuckle grip and an expression on his face so incredulous, Runaan might have laughed. So he did, high and hysterical, burying his face in the pillows, because he couldn’t bear to see him like that, knowing _he’d_ done that, lashed out with none of the decorum he’d once had, tantruming like a newborn, until his laughter turned to sobs, wetting the cloth of the pillows, turning them sticky and gross, and they stuck to his nose with every gasping inhale. He felt lightheaded from lack of air, and a more cognizant Runaan might have told him to lift his head before he smothered himself, but situation being what it was, he remained still. 

He heard Ethari shifting behind him, muttering something under his breath before pulling himself upright. Runaan peeked out from the safety of the pillows to see Ethari shuffling forward on his knees, wearing an odd expression. Runaan flinched at the outstretched hand, hands tightening to fists, eyes shutting closed. 

_No._

He could not bring himself to say it.

A moment passed, and no touch came, and he turned his head, just an inch, to look back at Ethari. He saw Ethari had fallen back on his heels, hands dropped to his lap, his expression akin to if Runaan had struck him across the face.

Runaan drew back into the safety of the pillows, unable to look at him any longer, the immeasurable _guilt_ he felt like a brand on his soul.

“ _Runaan_.”

He heard it that time, but he did not respond save to squeeze his eyes shut tighter. 

*

Ethari took to sleeping beside him every night, hunched over in his stool in a position that would surely result in cramps, and it was wholly unnecessary — he wasn’t an invalid, but Runaan could not open his mouth to tell him so. 

And if he were being honest, Ethari was a welcome sight after a night (or day) of bad dreams.

The only trouble were the days when Runaan was first to wake. Those times were hard, for Runaan could not scale the wall of his guilt well enough to rouse Ethari properly, and even if he could, he was often in no state to do something so physically taxing as shake awake a large-bodied person. Muscles trembling, eyes peeled open as if by manual manipulation, he dared say he couldn’t lift his own arm. 

Sometimes, he woke up and found himself back within the ether of his imprisonment, shadow figures dancing behind his eyelids, and he’d shout with no voice, because he thought he was free of this, thought he’d been freed and returned to his home — 

But perhaps _that_ was the dream…?

It was hard to tell most times, the difference between dreams and reality. Sometimes they’d bleed together in an odd fantastical mix, and he’d see Ethari’s broken expression swimming through the waters of his imprisonment, and he’d watch in mute horror as he floated away, drifting ever upwards until the dark swallowed him whole. And then he’d wake up in their bedroom, ears ringing, vision still half-blurry, but even then he could make out the tension in Ethari’s jaw, the way his hands clenched in white-knuckled fists on the bedside, sometimes half-risen to touch him, and that would start the panic anew. 

Sometimes odder things would happen. Sometimes, he’d wake in a trance, a cognizant void hovering three feet above his body. Those times, he felt truly awake for the first time in what felt forever, no fatigue, no fear. He might have questioned that further was it not such a relief.

He liked to think of it as “the glass box,” for he could think freely, hear and see, but he could not move, as if a blanketed window hung between him and the outside world. He would take those moments for himself, to relax and recuperate, allow his poison mind a second to catch its breath. He might do something as mundane as count the creases in the ceiling boards, or, if Ethari was close enough, he might admire the liquid lines of his husband’s face, the way his hair fell in luminescent waves down his brow. If Ethari was awake, he’d listen to him speak, savor his voice; whether he spoke words of apology or words of joy mattered little. He appreciated it all. 

Runaan liked the glass box. It was better than the times he woke with his mind in fragmented pieces, consciousness lost like a bottle at sea — and the sea was _angry_. Roiling, frothing waves, tide with the strength of a hundred horses, and he would wake, drowning, lungs full of water, limbs thrashing against the pull. 

Afterwards, always afterwards, he would hear Ethari’s cries muffled in the meat of his palm, and he’d imagine tears tracing silver down ruddy cheeks.

*

Once, he awoke — one of the rare times he felt himself enough to note it — to find Ethari waiting for him. He sat in a stool he must have brought with him from the lower levels, body slumped over and half against the headrest in sleep. Runaan looked at him for a long moment, noting his disheveled hair and the gaunt lines of his face. Ethari did not look well. 

He frowned, wishing he could reprimand him, tell him to take better care of himself, before he remembered that was what Ethari was always telling _him_. The thought brought a smile to his lips, faint — but there. His lips, cracked and dry, split painfully, and he coughed, the motion sending a wave of pain through a body that felt like it’d been the drop-cushion for a sack of bricks.

The noise roused Ethari from his sleep, and Runaan took a moment to lament the loss of his love’s peaceful look.

“Wha — Runaan?” Ethari drew himself up in a languorous stretch, and Runaan watched with mouth suddenly dry the play of evening light on the dark expanse of skin, muscles rippling even in his sorry state. Ethari swept a bleary gaze across the room, but when his eyes fell on Runaan, he sat upright, immediately alert. 

“Runaan.” His voice softened. “Are you alright, my love?” He reached a hand out to smooth Runaan’s hair, the movement instinctual, before he noticed the look on Runaan’s face — and he remembered.

His hand fell to his lap, lips drawing down, accentuating the tired lines of his face.

“Right,” he murmured, scrubbing a hand down his cheek. He gave a weak smile. “Of all the senses, it had to be touch. The worst choice for us two, eh, love?” 

The attempt at humor was not lost on him. This was where he would normally say something, respond to the jibe and begin their familiar back and forth of banter. He should say something. He _would._

The silence stretched on. 

“What do you need, Runaan?”

Ethari’s voice, so soft and gentle, speaking like words a touch louder would break Runaan into a thousand pieces. Indeed, it did break something within him, but no matter how he tried, he could not bring himself to voice the words lodged in the back of his throat.

Ethari was looking at him. Runaan had not even realized he’d turned his gaze away until he glanced back. His expression was one of broken understanding, soft as dove’s feathers. 

“You can’t speak, can you, love?”

No response.

Ethari sighed through his nose, shoulders sagging. He drew the stool up into the air and scooted closer to the bedside. Runaan noted the way he positioned his body, careful to avoid brushing shoulders.

“Can you show me, then?” Ethari asked. “What you need.”

No response.

“Water?”

No response.

Ethari sighed, drew upright and offered a gentle smile. “I’ll fetch you some.”

*

Viren’s face was not angry. It was cool, the barest of smiles on his lips, like he found this a most particular brand of amusing.

“Runaan,” Viren purred, or perhaps it was the creature that sat atop his shoulder like a wayward passenger, a cruel spectator to his torture. 

“Can you hear me, love? Runaan?”

Runaan gasped and thrashed when cool fingers brushed his cheek. No. _No._ Nobody could touch him like that, only Ethari, why was Viren doing this to him _how did he know_ —

* 

The door opened.

“Good morning, Runaan.” 

Ethari’s voice. Too cheerful. Noonday sun spilled into the room, making his eyes sting. Ethari must have drawn the blinds. 

Something thudded to the floor beside the bed. From the corner of his eye, he saw the edge of the folding table Ethari had made some years back to support his jewelry when he worked in the house. 

“You’re in for a treat, Runaan,” Ethari said, voice still bearing that too-sunny lilt. “I brought you sunberries. I know how you always liked those better than moonberries, and how you always tried to keep it secret.” A low chuckle. “People say you’re a good liar, but I’ve yet to see evidence of it.”

… 

Something cool pressed against his lips, and he flinched. 

The sensation faded.

“Runaan.” Ethari’s voice was chiding. “You have to eat.” 

… 

A sigh, and then the shuffling sounds of Ethari getting to his feet. “Alright, then. We’ll try again tonight.”

*

“Runaan.”

Ethari sat with chin on fist, brows drawn down. “It’s been two days. Did you even eat on your journey here?”

Silence.

“Right,” Ethari muttered. “How could I forget?”

Runaan felt him move closer, breaths washing over his face. He couldn’t see — today, fate had not allowed him the gift of sight. 

“You’ve said no to me before,” Ethari said lowly. “But you know I always win in the end. The one exception was Rayla, but she was always more your daughter than mine.” A pause. “Anyway, she’s not here right now. It’s just you and me in this room, and if we go head-to-head, we both know who will come out the victor.”

…

…

…

“...Fine. I’ll see you tonight.”

*

“If you don’t eat, you’ll get sick.”

Finally, a vein of distress had leaked into his voice. 

Runaan could almost call himself proud. 

“Alright, you’re already sick, but you’ll get _worse_.” A weight fell onto the bed, and Runaan’s body rolled a few inches to the side until it was stopped by his shoulder. “Do you think you could try one, for me?”

Silence.

“Maybe your stomach’s upset, or maybe you lost your taste for berries sometime in the past two years — I don’t know. If you’d only _tell_ me —” 

There was a choked off sound, a pause, then a throat clearing.

When Ethari’s voice came, it was in a whisper, “Try for me?”

Silence. 

*

“So that’s it, then?” 

It was murmured into the evening dark, sun having already dropped beyond the horizon.

“This” — Ethari waved expansively at his prone form — “is the ‘new you’?”

…

“I suppose I should be alright with that. I should be thankful that you’re here at all, when the alternative is that you’d still be rotting away in that cursed prison.”

… 

“Would you think me callous if I said I wasn’t?” He laughed quietly. “You always say I’m selfless, but you don’t know how I am when it comes to _you_ , Runaan. You’re the selfless one, always so worried about your own flaws that you’re oblivious to mine.”

… 

“I’ll see you tonight, Runaan.”

*

“Runaan, _please_. It’s been four days. I can see the weight you’ve lost.” The voice turned desperate. “Surely you know that’s not a good thing. You always went on about your recruits, saying they worked too hard and ate too little. I’m doing the same thing, Runaan. I’m just doing what you would do.”

Something rocked back against the chair, wood against wood. Ethari’s voice went high, almost hysterical. “This is ridiculous. _You_ are ridiculous.”

Silence.

“You know, I always thought you were the smarter of us, the rationalist. Yet here I am, pleading with you to take care of yourself, to do something so simple as _not die_.” He shook his head, the motion harsh and violent. Angry. “You’ve given up.” 

… 

Ethari burst from his seat. The chair rocked once, twice, then toppled onto its side. “You’re not even going to fight?” His voice was high, incredulous. “You’re not even going to fight to come back to me? Me, _Ethari_. Your husband, remember?” 

Harsh laughter echoed off the walls, filled with bitterness and self-loathing. “Of course you don’t. You seem not to remember anything of the good times. It looks as though Viren’s the more important of us, after all. You certainly have no trouble remembering _him_.”

…

“I’m going for a walk.”

Ethari did not return for a long time.


	2. Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> delay? hm? what?

At first, all he felt was rage. It was not directed at anyone in particular, merely a projection of his frustration and his grief. As the minutes passed, his hammering steps leading him along the vacant perimeter of Silvergrove at dawn, he could begin to identify points of note by which he might aim his volatile emotions: himself, for being so quick to anger, Runaan, for his inability to recover,  _ Viren _ —

His breath caught, his fists clenched, and he had to physically restrain himself from venting his rage in a yell that would wake all of the sleeping Silvergrove. When his steps next started, they were stilted and angry, jarring the joints of his knees with each foot that landed. He almost could not recognize himself for the strangeness of the feelings lingering there. 

Congenial by nature, it was unlike him to wrankle, and even more for those feelings to fester. But  _ this _ . He’d never known the like, a vile, blistering wound on his psyche, a raveled knot of pain and grief and fear, wrapped tight in threads of  _ hate _ so strong they might make him sick. It was unlike him — all of it was unlike him.

He realized that he’d stopped walking. As if in a dream, he observed his surroundings, the sheltered cutout of trees and the stream, lit purple in morning light. It was the place he went to when Runaan was not with him, when he needed to be away from his people and the noises and sensations of his hometown. He had not been here in two years.

Ethari stared at the hollow between two oak trees, the place that his traitorous feet had brought him. He looked at a faint impression on the ground, a space where the thick carpet of pine needles thinned just enough to be noticable. He sat, and his body fit the space perfectly. 

He sat, and it was like an affirmative was given, his emotions breaking through the fine veneer he’d put in front of them, and he was loosing tears though he was not entirely certain why. 

It was unlike him to feel baffled by his own emotions. He may be uncertain of the world, at times, but never of his own mind. It was unlike him to anger. It was unlike him to lash out without reason, at his love, no less! He was slow, gentle, methodical, and his manner followed. He licked his lips. Was it guilt that hid in the shadows of his rage? A skulking passenger that plodded behind slowly, leadening steps and raising doubts. 

The tears increased with this new clarity, for now he saw what he’d done as a crime more egregious than any before performed in the history of the Silvergrove. Moonshadows valued the balance of life above all else, were well staked in their roots and home, and Ethari had upturned it all with nary a thought, careless and brash as Moonshadows were never supposed to be. The longer he thought on it, the deeper the despair went, seeding deep in his breast and making a mess of his insides.

Runaan did not deserve his anger. Frustration or no, he had enough to handle without having to worry about his own husband turning on him.

_ Like a snake, _ Ethari thought miserably. 

Runaan was not in his right mind. There had been times — in sleep yes, but still — that he’d tried to hurt himself, probably as a way to rid himself of the riled sensation beneath his skin. But those times Ethari had been present to bring him back. What would happen now that he was alone, and for long? Who knew what he would do without proper surveillance, and Ethari had just left him there after telling him he was to blame for his misery and Ethari’s own —

He burst to his feet in a flurry of motion, whirled on his heel and began to run, desperation lending him strength. He wished he were a Skywing, then, so he might have the speed of flight to aid him, but as it were, he was only Moonshadow, bound to mortal earth just as the rest of the world.

So it was that Ethari returned to his beloved well after dawn, apologies piling atop each other like impatient children, all eager to be out in the open air before the others. He climbed the stairs with regrets overflowing from all corners of his mind, and when he opened the door to his bedroom, he had one already halfway spilling from his lips. 

The words died in his throat. 

Runaan sat upright in bed, gaze distant but there, fingers curled around the bowl of sunberries that Ethari had left on the eve of his outburst. Even as he watched, Runaan lifted a berry to his lips. Chewed, swallowed, and reached for another. 

Ethari dropped to his knees, and nearly wept with relief, for the bowl held only half of what it had before, and Runaan showed no signs of stopping. 

At the sound of his legs hitting the floor, Runaan looked to him, and Ethari felt a renewed sense of emotion at the fact that he was present enough to show such a  _ normal  _ response. 

“My love.” He choked on his own spit and moved to the bedside in lieu of continuing. Runaan watched him with eyes like liquid light, stolid and solemn. Ethari found himself out of breath, tears pricking the corners of his eyes, reaching out with both hands, desperation lending him hope despite all evidence to the contrary.

Silent, shaking, he laid his palms upon Runaan’s bare arms, bared and raw. There was a ripple in the flesh, like the quiver of a horse’s flanks, and then the barest of pauses before Runaan drew away. 

That was it.

No tantrum, no screams, no grimace. No sign of distress but the fact that he had not initiated. It was like until this point Runaan had been trapped within a fever dream, sweating and unconscious, and now, finally, the fever was breaking.

Ethari was not too proud to deny the tears of relief that swept from his eyes.

*

Runaan regarded Ethari from a place very far away. He saw him, he recognized him — that, he would never deny — but it was as though the images he saw were projections of reality, the reflection of a reflection. It was the same with the berries he ate, methodical, mechanical, a means to fill the pit in his stomach. He felt the hands on his arms for a fleeting second before his mind protested and he pulled away. 

_ No. _

Ethari’s hand froze, and he saw his husband swallow roughly before slowly, uncertainly pulling away.

Runaan watched through glassy eyes.  _ How could you even want to...after everything I’ve done? After the mess I’ve made? _

His mind raced back to the moment on the wall of the castle, meeting Rayla, face to face, sword to sword under the blinding light of the full moon.

_ “Runaan, you need to call off the mission.” _

_ “You’ve lost your mind!” _

She had tried to reason with him, shown him the egg of the dragon prince, hale and healthy, and he had stubbornly refused to listen to her, for in that moment, she had not been his primary objective.

Ethari would have been ashamed. 

A promise made to two lost souls:  _ “Yes, I will think of her as my daughter. I will protect her with my life.” _

What would  _ they _ think of him, now, knowing what he’d done? If they were, by some miracle, to come home, would he even be able to muster joy through the withering waves of shame?

From the safety of his glass box, Runaan watched Ethari break apart before him. He saw the tears and the flush upon his face, different than other times, less upset but no less  _ broken _ , and he felt something within him stir. 

A vision of Viren, his eyes blackening and lips twisting with the vile words of his spell, shifting to the dim light of the Silvergrove and the ever-glow that came from the bottom of the lotus pond, Ethari’s hands reaching, desperate, to catch the sinking light of a flower, but the petals were slick and they slipped between his fingers and into the blackened depths, the light of the gem-heart flickering once and then guttering out entirely.

Ethari’s reaction.

Runaan shut his eyes, and his heart squeezed to imagine him in that moment. Not only was his beloved gone to the abyss, but his daughter had abandoned him in the same feat of cowardice as her parents. Of course, he couldn’t logically blame Rayla for any of that, and thus her wrongdoing fell on him as well.

Thinking back to the mission, he felt not a small amount of discomfort. There was something  _ wrong  _ about the way he conducted himself between his occupation and his homelife, feeling as though he would do anything for someone, travel to the moon and back and back again, and then losing that part entirely. It was like he lost a piece of himself when he went on those missions, and while he’d never questioned it before, placing those versions of himself beside each other, he was more than disturbed. 

Ethari disrupted his thoughts by falling backwards into his stool, the noise like a thunderclap in the otherwise silent room. He had his face in his hands, but Runaan could see the tears squeezing through his clenched palms.

_ Ethari _ , he wished to say, but no words came, and he felt his own sorrow reaching out to mix with Ethari’s own, two wandering souls in a barren desert of grief. Between them lay a sea of emotion, words unspoken, fragmented pieces of hearts awaiting discovery. 

A gasp escaped his lips at the  _ feel  _ of it, for the connection was heavy, a burdensome weight knotting their two battered souls together. 

He saw it behind his eyes as a golden chain, weather-worn and rusted in places, but thick and  _ real _ . He grabbed at it wonderingly, rolling it hand over hand until he had brought his heart to Ethari’s, and he could feel it throbbing in time with his own, the rush of blood, health and life. 

Perhaps it was a figmentation of his mind, broken as it was, or perhaps Ethari truly felt him there, tugging at his self, wanting, yearning. It did not matter either way. Ethari lifted his face from his hands, expression so heartbreakingly drawn, Runaan wanted to scream. He crept closer, as close as he was able to without touch, and brought his face down above Runaan’s. Runaan angled his head to better meet the molten gold of his eyes.

They stayed like that for a time, just looking at each other. More than once, Runaan thought to speak, but each time he brought the words to the front of his mouth, his tongue curled in on itself, his teeth clenched, and his jaw burned. He could not. The realization brought a hot rush of scorn for this inability, this weakness, but he stubbornly pushed it aside, for as much as it irked him, it would break him further if he were to ruin the perfection of this moment. 

They did not speak. They did not touch. Still, somehow, it seemed as though they were closer than they’d ever been.

*

Ethari deemed him fit enough to see Rayla. Or rather, Rayla could not handle another day spent buzzing on the front stoop — neither could Ethari or the unfortunate residents of the Silvergrove, for that matter. Rayla was off before Ethari had finished speaking, dashing through the front door and up the stairs.

Ethari watched her go before turning back to Callum. At his apologetic look, Callum only smiled and waved him off, saying, “After babysitting Rayla for a week, I doubt I have the energy for that emotional drain anyway.” 

Ethari had nodded good-naturedly, hardly offended by the implications, and hurried to catch up with his wayward daughter. Despite trusting her with all his heart, he could not put aside the flash of anxiety that permeated at the thought of Runaan meeting someone, alone, without him to play buffer.

He needn’t have worried.

He found Rayla standing unmoving in front of the door, staring at the wood like it was cold-plated steel instead of easy maple. 

Ethari moved to stand beside her, waiting.

“I’m scared,” Rayla said promptly. Ethari had taught her to be earnest in her emotions, and she’d never strayed from his teachings — at least with him. “I’ve been so caught up in the  _ getting  _ to him, I never thought about what to do once I  _ got  _ there. Do I tell him how much I missed him? How much I  _ need  _ —” She stopped, sucked in a breath. “Or should I apologize? Will he even want me anymore, after what I did?”

Ethari was silent.

She looked up at him, and he was surprised to see the edge of tears lacing her eyes. “He’s not alright, is he?”

Ethari let out a heavy breath, then pulled her into a hug. She fell into his arms with easy familiarity, pressing her cheek into his chest almost fiercely. He hadn’t realized how he’d craved it until he’d brought her against him, the warmth of another, the simple intimacy of loving and knowing he was loved in return. He felt the acid sting of tears, for he knew not how long it would be before he could share this with Runaan again, if ever.

“No, he’s not,” Ethari said in response to her question, “but he’s getting there.” He gave her a smile. “I’m sure that seeing you will help him immensely.” 

She looked at him with frightful eyes, but Rayla was never one to shy from her fears. Runaan had taught her that himself. She squared her shoulders, stepped from his arms and opened the door herself.

Inside found Runaan on his side, playing with the corner of the coverlet. Ethari might have called him bored, if he thought such a thing was possible. Whatever the truth, it was good to see Runaan awake. Even better, he saw the bowl of soup he’d left at noon was now empty.

When they entered the room, Runaan stopped fiddling with the coverlet and looked up. His eyes fell on Ethari first, then on Rayla.

Ethari watched him smile. Not a broad flash of teeth — nothing so gaudy. It was a softening of the eyes and brow, a lifting of the mouth. Learning the nuance of Runaan’s expressions would, for anyone else, be like developing a new muscle, but Ethari had the advantage of long hours spent doing nothing but mapping his sleeping face.

There was a tangible pause as Rayla took him in, a suspended moment in which Runaan patiently abided her scrutiny and Ethari's breath hung halted in his chest. The moment passed when Rayla moved, surging to the bedside as if pulled on strings. She stopped mid-motion, knelt on the floor with hands outstretched, as if sensing that something was not right with him. Her head canted the slightest bit, eyes widening, jaw tensing.

Her arms fell to her sides. "Hello," she said in a low voice, emotion peeking through the softened edges. "Runaan, I —"

She faltered as she'd feared she would, words catching, breaths encumbered. Ethari moved to her side, pulling her against him, offering a watery smile to them both.

"She's very happy to see you," he said to the silence. "I almost broke my ankles trying to catch her on her way up."

Runaan smiled again. Mischievous? He looked serene, at ease. It warmed his heart to see it after all the suffering.

Rayla swallowed, smiling herself, though weakly, and struggled to find her voice. 

It took long moments, but Runaan waited, never pressing, his air one of kind patience. Ethari followed suit.

"I missed you," she finally said. "Endlessly. Every day, I missed you, but I never showed it. They were my memories. I didn't want to share you." Her eyes shut for half a moment, and she seemed afraid to say these next words. "I was… I felt guilty, after everything. I pushed it aside for the journey, but when we'd finished, when we brought Zym home and there was nothing left to distract me —"

She cut off, and Ethari tightened his grip on her, willing her to take his strength.

"I thought about it. What I'd done. First I was only angry. How could you misunderstand? How were you so desperate for blood, after all you spoke of life's sanctity?" She paused, gaze falling to the floor. "When I was younger, you would tell me of responsibility. You told me that you loved me, but you had a duty to the world and sometimes that might make you do painful things, things that  _ hurt _ . I listened to you, of course, but until then I never  _ heard  _ you. I was only a child. I wasn’t thinking the way you taught me, broad-minded, of the world outside my own lens. It was confusing, and painful, and it was only later that I realized —" She laughed, a sharp puff of air. "I realized you aren't just Runaan, Rayla's dad. You're Runaan, chief of the assassins. You have a duty, to a whole village of people, a  _ country _ , who's not me. You had four other lives to worry about besides my own. You had the wisdom of past experience, and you were weighing your decisions on probability. You didn't have the luxury of chance like I thought you did."

Throughout her explanation, Runaan watched her, eyes soft but intent. Ethari thought he looked proud of her.

With effort, Rayla brought her gaze up from the floor, once again on the verge of tears. "I killed them. They all died because of me. If I wasn't so reckless, I might have spared a thought for the others in your care." She shook her head. "But I didn't. I was single-minded and selfish. It didn't even occur to me that they might not make it. And  _ you,  _ Runaan." She sucked in a breath, chest heaving with the effort of getting the words out. "I left you to die. After all you'd done for me, I  _ left _ you there, and they — Now you're —"

She cut off with a small noise and a wild gesture in his direction. It was perhaps crass, in retrospect, to speak of him so bluntly, but Rayla was not thinking of courtesy.

Over her shoulder, Ethari read the expression in Runaan’s eyes, the desperation, the plea. This was his daughter breaking down before him, and he did not have the strength to speak himself. 

Ethari understood.

He twisted his grip on her shoulders and turned her into his chest. She fell against him, clutching at his shirt and sobbing.

“It’s alright,” he soothed. “He knows. He knows all of it, Rayla, and he loves you anyway.” 

“How can you know that?” she choked out, and Ethari flinched at the reminder. Rayla seemed to realize what she said a moment after saying it, and she hid her face in his chest.

Ethari pushed aside the hurt, focused on the sorrow, the compassion. He pushed at her shoulders gently, enough to draw her attention and get her to look at him, albeit bleary-eyed and half-focused. 

“One does not need words to speak,” he said gently. “You, of all people, should know that.”

She wiped her cheek. “Yes, but —”

Ethari spun her around, and together they faced Runaan, who continued to look on them with those liquid eyes.

“Look at him,” Ethari said, “and ask him if he could hate you, if he could do anything but love you with all his heart.” 

Rayla did.

Runaan’s face shone with offense, at the prospect that he could harbor any such feelings for the daughter of his heart, his soul-bonded, his family. 

Rayla’s response was immediate, visceral, her posture crumpling with the weight of her emotions, sorrow and relief in equal measure. Ethari caught her, holding her tightly, heart breaking at the swell of feeling on her face. Normally so composed, her collapse was all the more upsetting, and he had to wonder how long she had been holding it all in to break so effectively.

A long moment passed in which none spoke, the room silent save for her weeping. Ethari ran his hand through her hair, hoping the motion might soothe her. She eventually quieted, her tears not yet dried but the severity of it lost, and Ethari felt it was safe to look away from her, then, and back at Runaan.

Runaan had gone very still, muscles held taut, face imbued with strain. His expression was unsettled, brows knitted together, lips drawn, and Ethari recognized it for what it was; after so many years wedded, that one was a familiar sight. Such was the face Runaan wore when he found something he could not do, whether a task simple as baking or something more complex, a stunt he could not perform to his liking. It took but a moment for Ethari to realize that the expression was directed not outwards but inwards, and then another moment for him to realize why. 

Witnessing them sat there like that, Rayla clutched in his arms, he a silent support, seemed to evoke something in Runaan. Rayla had laid out the bones of her grief, and yet he, lying on the bed without voice and touch, was robbed of any means to convince her of the opposite. He felt for the first time a strong yearning for the opposite, to hold her in his arms and relay his pride, his joy at seeing her, for it should not have been Ethari there as the sole point of solace. 

There had been a time in his life when nothing would have stood between him and his daughter distressed, for if it had, it would have met the sharp end of his blade. Here lay a problem he could not do away with, for the issue, at its root, lay in the core of his being, and he didn’t imagine he would do a very good job providing comfort if he ran himself through.

Such as it was, he could not help feeling useless, seeing Rayla laid so bare and unable to do a thing about it. His hands clenched on air, and he cursed them their inability to touch. 

*

In the stagnant pauses between Ethari’s visits, or in the long hours of the night, Runaan found his mind wandering. There were things he would’ve liked to say, true, but there were also things he did not, in fact was sure he  _ could  _ not, even had his mind remained unlocked and speech been a feasible means of expression. He could not specify an exact moment when the liquid nothing retreated enough that he felt himself, but happen it did, and thus he connected enough fragmented parts of his past self to readopt the name Runaan — a shadow, to be sure, but more than what he had been.

When he took back the name, he took along a bevvy of uncertain luggage. In possession of memories not his own, he felt a disembodied passenger, playing witness to the intimacies of a person in another life. They wore his face and embodied his voice, but he knew with certainty that they two were not the same. Runaan of Now knew nothing of that easy confidence, the stellar countenance and dry wit. He did not know how to touch innocently yet affectionately, nor how to smile without malice, nor how to feel without pain.

He looked on in confused reverence, wondering how he had once been that elf and if he could ever encapsulate him again. He looked back, and he envied.

Sometimes, he wished he could return to the safety of the glass box and abandon this new, worry-laden mind. It was simpler when he did not have to think and doubt was an emotion he could file and catalogue. 

When he saw Ethari, he felt the most peculiar mix of emotions. There was comfort, of course, relief at his constant presence and the fact that his trust was not misguided, but after the initial surge of warmth came the more troubling emotions.

There was doubt and fear. There was pain and confusion and guilt, regret, a deeper remorse, and an overwhelming tide of sorrow that threatened to drag him under with its strength.

Seeing Rayla had awoken all those emotions and more.

In his imprisonment, he’d had time and more time to think of each and every one of his wrongdoings. He’d had time to cycle through his emotions, parse the swollen threads from each other and find their individual ends. After long hours, he found the niggling things that those of his profession struggled to quell: doubt, insecurity, remorse, but ego was an iron door barring him accepting them as true. The stubborn knot of his pride was his greatest advocate and his greatest failure. 

It took a long time for him to think about that. If he entertained what ifs, he opened the possibility that he’d been wrong, and that was  _ painful _ . He’d spent half his life thinking he fought for a better future, and any other supposition meant he’d fought for nothing — worse, he’d fought for the opposite, a future which would have been better without his interference.

It meant that he’d led countless dozens to their deaths. It meant that he sacrificed others on a meaningless cause, encouraging them to trust him even while putting their and their loved ones’ happiness in jeopardy. It meant that his promise of return to Ethari been a lie from the beginning, and its very foundation was blackened in rot. It meant that he’d threatened Rayla for no reason but arrogance and his own willful ignorance.

_ I missed you _ .

Of all things he’d expected her to say to him upon their meeting, it was not that she’d  _ missed  _ him. Was angry with him, yes. Wished for him to rescind parental ties, maybe. But to say she missed him — the implication —

He felt treacherous tears threatening at even the thought. To say she missed him was to say she was lacking something without him, that somehow her life had been more with him in it and him being gone was a tangible loss. Such a simple admittance. It meant more to him than life itself. 

The things she and Ethari said kept him warm at night. When the nightmares were worst, he remembered that the morning would come, and Ethari would be there with a plate of sweet things to greet the sun. In the long stretches of silence that Ethari visited the market and Rayla went to introduce Callum to residents of the Silvergrove, he remembered that the afternoon would come, and Rayla would be there with her smiles and livening energy and stories of Sel’s broken cart. 

Sometimes, it was another thing to feel guilty about. For all they gave him, he could offer nothing, not even something so simple as conversation. As it was, he was not sure how to go about repaying such a debt. It was not in his nature to be selfish. His very occupation demanded selflessness of the highest caliber, the willingness to end his life to protect the sanctity of others, but this was a battle he could not win through strength of arms. 

It troubled him, for “helpless” had never been an adjective he’d use to describe himself. Cautious, sometimes, but never hesitant when it mattered. It was the very skill he’d reprimanded Rayla for. Ironic that he should find the flaw within himself years later.

*

Ethari fell into a rhythm, heart easing as the worst of the burden fell away. Runaan seemed more present after his conversation with Rayla, as if her grief had given him something to move towards, the wings to his recovery. 

Ethari finally allowed himself to tend to some of the abandoned requisition forms that had been piling at the stoop of his workshop over the last two weeks. He felt relaxed enough to take short walks away from the house, whether a necessary task — a visit to the market or tending his shadowpaw — or to rekindle his old ritual of immersion in nature. 

He went to Runaan with something other than dread in his heart. He took pleasure in preparing his meals and enjoyed Runaan’s silent company. Sometimes he’d take Rayla with him to visit, and he’d hold her in his arms and tell them both a story that they’d heard a hundred times.

Runaan began to show reciprocal signs. He was almost always awake now when Ethari came in, save the few times Ethari visited him late at night. When the door opened, he lifted his head and smiled in that new, subtle way of his, before letting himself fall back against the pillows, eyes never leaving Ethari’s. He accepted food readily, but more than that, he showed character; preference for one food over another, slowing or hastening depending on mood and hunger level, a look of thanks or any other show of understanding to the lengths of Ethari’s devotion. 

It was then that Ethari allowed himself to feel the slow kindlings of hope, which until then he had smothered in a blanket of grief so thick, it had been reduced to withered embers. Still, those embers remained, as they would so long as he had love left in his body, and it was no time at all before they had blossomed into an ever-present warmth inside his breast. Perhaps that was the reason he did what he did; he became so caught in dreams, he forgot what was reality, the cold truths that defied the glowing fantasy that seemed to  _ be _ .

It was almost morning, and the dying moonlight seeping through the window cast Runaan in celestial light. They had spent the day together — Rayla had taken Callum off for some much needed adventure, and so the house was theirs alone. Ethari had wiled the day away regaling stories, and then waxing poetic when he ran out of, and Runaan had almost laughed at him when he threw a dramatic pose and feigned tears in his recounting of Garlath’s fall. He watched Runaan go through the food he brought him as the day passed, silently rejoicing at the ease in which he took it. Then, when nightfall came, and the dark hushed the need to speak, they watched each for a long time, Runaan laying on his side and Ethari seated with ankles crossed at the bedside. Runaan soon fell asleep, and Ethari stared down at him for a while longer still before sleep claimed him as well.

*

Runaan woke before dawn. The first thing he saw was Ethari, hunched in his stool with head on fist. He looked at Runaan with soft admiration, worry lines softened by fatigue, his eyes mellowed to burnished gold in the shadowed light.

Runaan imagined running his hand through the silken ends of his hair, fingers catching on the divots in his cheekbones and coming to rest at the space where jaw tapered to neck. He felt his lips pull back in the faint approximation of a smile, and Ethari must have seen something there, for he smiled back, moonstruck.

Indeed, Ethari did see something. Morning had come, yet only a few hours lay between him and a slew of warm memories that Ethari held more precious than gold. He had watched Runaan’s eyes flutter, then open, the ripple and settle of a crystal pool, and watched him take a moment to blink blearily, regaining his bearings, before his gaze flicked up to meet Ethari’s, and he looked so beautiful there, with the dying moonlight playing dappled patterns on his skin, with his almost-smile and eyes softened by fatigue, that Ethari could not help falling back into old habits, reaching for him with tender fingers and a smile soft as gossamer. 

It did not end well.

Runaan’s face twisted and he jerked backwards, jostling Ethari’s hand away. The spell broke like shattered glass, and Ethari nearly fell out of his seat in his haste to move back. 

There was a moment of utter stillness in which it felt the entire world had turned its absolute attention to their little room in the far corner of the Silvergrove, collective breaths drawn and kept. They regarded each other from their respective positions, Runaan huddled to the bedrest like a cornered rabbit, Ethari clutching his hand like he’d been burned, and Runaan wished he could disappear for the sick feeling in his gut.

“I —” Ethari stopped mid-sentence. It seemed he had not known what he was going to say in the first place. 

Stricken, Runaan turned away.

The silence lengthened.

Finally, when he could stand it no longer, he threw his fist into the sheets and exhaled what would once have been a frustrated cry.

He met Ethari’s gaze with desperate eyes.

_ Leave me _ , they begged.  _ Why don’t you leave me? One day, you’ll find I’m beyond help, and you’ll grow tired of me, and you’ll keep on living without me.  _

His heart squeezed. If that was the inevitable future, why did it fill him with such panic? 

_ Why not just leave now?  _ he asked with his eyes.  _ Why keep suffering?  _

Ethari’s face was drawn, but his words were soft. “I won’t leave you.” Though not an exact response, the words were close enough to show that Ethari understood. “I won’t — I  _ can’t _ .  _ Runaan. _ ” Ethari sucked in a breath, fist going to press against his mouth. “You don’t know what that would do to me.  _ Please _ don’t make me go.”

Guilt, like a twisted piece of glass in the soft flesh of his stomach. 

Ethari, crying again because of him. Ethari, ever loyal, starved of affection for weeks, the gentlest of touches shoved away because Runaan wasn’t brave enough to accept it. Ethari, forced to serve his invalid husband, postponing the joys of work, friends, anywhere outside the safety of these four walls. Ethari, begging Runaan not to send him away, as if  _ he _ held the power to make such a decision for him.

Runaan wished he could embrace him, swallow his hurt and soothe him with words of apology. He wished he could open his mouth to tell Ethari what a good job he was doing, how much he appreciated his care, how sorry he was that he couldn’t better show it. He wished he could bring some level of peace, some comfort in the waking dawn.

But he couldn’t. He’d have to settle for tears in the silence.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seriously im sorry for the delay. i have no excuse but quarantine blues. this was supposed to be one final chapter, but it got too long. the last chapter will probably have smut. i think.


	3. Fit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo. this only took like an entire friggin month. also. i know this was supposed to be 3 chapters, but it definitely needs an expansion. i was trying to keep the chap lenth to 6k, and this was already past that so i figure why not.

“Runaan.”

Runaan looked up as the door opened and shut with a resounding thud. He did not relax and fall back against the covers like he did most other times. Instead, he tracked Ethari’s path across the room, eyes flicking over the tight set of his shoulders, the way his eyes burned but would not rise from the floor. Despite the rarity of such an occurance, Runaan knew what Ethari looked like when he was upset.

Ethari sat heavily on the stool beside the bed, arms planted on his spread legs. He regarded Runaan with troubled eyes.

Runaan looked back, perfectly open, beseeching.  _ What’s wrong? _

“We need to talk,” Ethari said. 

At the gravity of his tone, Runaan sat up further. 

“It’s come to my attention that you may be harboring certain feelings you know I’d find unacceptable if you were hale enough to tell me of them.” 

Runaan tensed, rapidly relaying the contents of his mind this day, the past weeks, trying to think what he possibly could have done to upset Ethari, mum as he was.

Ethari, it seemed, had already completed that train of thought and moved to another even before Runaan had finished examining himself. 

“Do you remember what you promised me,” he was saying, “when we first wed?”

Runaan met his eyes.  _ Of course. I promised — _

“You promised to cherish me above your duty and your life. You said you’d hold my soul in higher esteem than your own.” Ethari shifted, restless, seeming to get upset the further he spoke. “You promised all that to me, on your honor, on your life. You  _ promised _ .” He let out a harsh breath, and Runaan tensed, anticipating a blow, but when Ethari’s voice came again, it was low and even. “How,” he said, “do you suppose you can do all that when you’ve put nary a thought into yourself in all the days you’ve been here?”

Runan’s brow furrowed.  _ What —? _

“Worthless, vile, useless,” Ethari spat each word with a vitriol Runaan had never before seen from him. “How could you even  _ think _ all that? Don’t you dare deny it! I  _ know _ what you look like when you’re hiding, and I know even better what you look like when you’re hiding from  _ me _ .” 

Ethari stood, seemingly unable to contain the energy shifting through him, and began a slow circuit around the room. Runaan watched, stunned and confused. That, at least, had been the outburst he’d been expecting from the beginning, but certainly not after such a soft introduction. 

“Is that why you fail to speak?” he said, face angry, posture drawn. “I can see the longing in your eyes, even if your mouth won’t form the words. Is that why you look after Rayla with such guilt?” Ethari stopped, swallowed, and said faintly. “Is that why you flinch from my touch?” 

Ethari looked at him from measured silence, brows drawing with the weight of his questions. He drew nearer the bed, each step carrying the force of singular presence. Runaan was still as a cornered doe, breaths frozen in his throat, face taut as marble.

“Tell me, Runaan.” Ethari spoke, eyes brimming, voice holding none of the anger it had. “Do you truly think those things about yourself? I’ve failed as a husband if you do.”

Runaan did not speak. He did not turn his head. He dared not breathe.

Ethari’s easy nod of understanding and choked breath were more heartbreaking than a hundred shouted profanities. His quiet tears rent a hole in his chest. The way he turned for the door, feet dragging and shoulders caved in, as if things like “will” and “might” had fled his body in a fit of panic.

He couldn’t stand it.

Runaan pulled the covers from his chest and let his legs fall over the bed. For the first time in weeks, his feet touched solid wood and he drew up to his full height. He rocked backwards for a moment, unsteady, muscles surely atrophied in his many days of inactivity. Still, despite his discomfort, he rallied some of the bravery that he’d once been famous for and stepped forward. His step strengthened as he crossed the room, stride steadying, lengthening, with a clear objective in mind, and when he reached Ethari and stepped in front of the door, he thought nothing of the hand that reached out to lay atop Ethari’s bare arm and squeeze.

Ethari froze, head snapping down to that single point of contact, and Runaan’s brow furrowed, momentarily confused, before he realized —

Slowly, Ethari’s gaze lifted to his, and his cheeks, tear-painted and red, lifted in a smile.

Runaan found himself returning the gesture unconsciously, grip tightening on Ethari’s arm. 

_ It’s alright _ , he tried to say.  _ I love you _ . 

Ethari’s smile tightened again, and Runaan mourned the loss. “Ah, Runaan,” he murmured. “I know you’re confused. I know you’re probably trying to comfort me. You don’t even know what I’m upset about.” He shook his head, smile going wry, shifting like chameleon colors. “I suppose that’s the most upsetting thing of all.” 

Ethari sobered and softly, oh-so softly, placed his hand atop Runaan’s. Runaan did not move away. Taking this as affirmative, Ethari lingered, eyes searching Runaan’s. In another time, he might have taken his face between his hands, brought their foreheads together, basked in their closeness and drank deep.

“Listen to me,” Ethari said firmly. “You are  _ none _ of those things. You are kind. You are good. You are worth more to me than the moon itself. Even still, it’s time I told you the truth no one else would.” Ethari sank to the floor, and Runaan followed, gaze caught in his, entrapped. 

“My love,” Ethari breathed. “My darling love, you’re far from perfect. No matter how you try, you’ll never be perfect.” His gaze was tender as the fingers that touched him. “But, love, no one is. That’s the beauty of the world. For every one of your failings, there’s someone out there to fill the gap. The things you hold against yourself —” Ethari shook his head, still smiling faintly. “You couldn’t have changed those things, even were you twice the elf you are.”

_ But Rayla — My squad — _

“She forgives you, Runaan. _I_ forgive you. For leaving me, for leaving her, for pressuring her into a profession she wasn’t even sure she wanted, for being so fucking stubborn you wouldn’t even give a thought to the people you’d leave behind if you died —” Ethari drew in a breath, gave a watery smile. “I forgive you for all of it.” 

Runaan trembled. His eyes were wet.  _ You...do? _

Ethari inclined his chin, declining to speak in favor of the silent language that seemed so much more meaningful at this time. 

Runaan almost spoke, then. He felt the words pooling in his throat, rising bubbles that need only take shape on his tongue and be released to the world. Something within him balked, those last treacherous kernels of fear keeping the words stubbornly corralled, fearful of what might happen after so long spent in the quiet.

Ethari read the indecision on his face and dared to step closer, their faces separated by a scant inch. Runaan reveled in the closeness, the flesh against his fingertips paired with their nearness almost too much for him to handle. His breath quickened, pupils dilating, and  _ oh _ , he loved it, the thrill of it, the intense shock of want after so long spent feeling nothing. He bit back a giddy smile. Ethari had always said he thrived on danger. 

Still, despite the tension between them, they dared not shift position lest the moment be lost. Runaan itched to touch further, but fear hounded his thoughts. Ethari heaved a sudden breath, shoulders relaxing, arm falling away from Runaan’s fingers. Confused, Runaan watched him regain himself, eyes shut, fidgeting with his scarf for half a moment before his eyes opened again on a shy smile. 

Runaan caught his breath, understanding.

Ethari had moved away first. Ethari had enjoyed his touch despite its simplicity. Ethari had not pushed further. Ethari would be happy with Runaan, no matter what he did, whether he healed further or decided to remain in the safety of the glass box. Ethari would take what he was given, and he’d love Runaan anyway.

Ethari regarded him quietly, watching him understand. By the time he’d finished, Runaan’s eyes were wet, and he had to sit back on his thighs, emotions too heavy for his thin shoulders. 

_ You...you really mean all that,  _ he thought, feeling a little bit dizzy. 

He wasn’t sure what to make of it. 

“You don’t have to answer me now,” Ethari said. “You don’t have to answer me ever, if you don’t think that’s something you’ll be ready for. I need you to understand — I don’t _ need _ anything from you, Runaan. I  _ have  _ you. I didn’t have you even a month ago, and that’s a blessing all on its own.”

Ethari regarded him a moment longer before rising to his feet. As he made for the door, smile still supplanted upon his lips, he murmured, “That’s what you are — a blessing.”

When he’d gone, Runaan sat still upon the floor, turning the words over in his mind. Again and again, they danced merry circles, sending a trickle of warmth with every revolution.

_ A blessing.  _

*

It was their first days of courting all over again. Thin breaths and the barest of touches, the edge of a smile hidden in the shy dip of a head and blushes they both pretended not to notice. Ethari was careful, more careful than he’d been even those first times, for Runaan held a fragility that had not been there when they’d met, a patched vulnerability whose broken edges were still visible with the promise of fracture. He subdued himself, dampened the giddy excitement that threatened to pull him under with its force. He found himself reverting to the person he’d been when Rayla was young. His tone softened, he used words sparingly and simply, his movements became slow, easy to follow.

Runaan seemed to appreciate the change. He calmed somewhat, and the prospect of touch didn’t seem to bother him as much when he could anticipate its coming. Ethari knew, realistically, that Runaan did not enjoy his touch yet, not when his face held the same tautness it did when Ethari dressed his wounds after a mission gone wrong, but it was easy to be selfish. It was easy to savor each and every bout of contact, no matter how few, no matter how swift, to relish the warmth of his skin and the gooseflesh that erupted beneath his fingertips.

Evidently Rayla noticed the change, because she cornered him after a visit and demanded to know what had happened.

“I saw you touch him,” she said bluntly. “Only for a moment, but — he wouldn’t let you do that before.”

“No, he didn’t,” Ethari admitted.

A pause.

“Well, what is it, then?” Rayla’s tone was impatient, and if she were a few years younger, she would be stamping her foot in irritation.

Ethari hid a smile. “I’d tell you if I knew,” he said honestly. “I don’t know what changed. One day we were speaking as usual” — His smile faltered, but only for a moment before he shrugged. — “and he decided he was ready.”

Rayla looked skeptical. “Just like that? That doesn’t sound like Runaan.”

“Maybe not the one we used to know,” Ethari said. “We’re only just getting to know this Runaan.”

Rayla seemed troubled by his response, but she nodded all the same. Another elf might have left the conversation there, but Ethari knew her well enough to know she was still upset, further than their direct conversation.

He stood patiently, shifting his weight onto his back leg to wait.

Rayla seemed not to notice, of course; she was intensely focused, like Runaan that way, and she leveled that focus into everything she did, self-brooding included. When she surfaced from her thoughts, it was only to look up and blurt, “What does it mean?”

“What does what mean?” He already knew, but he wanted her to say it. It was good for her to process before she spoke.

“He let you touch him,” she said. “And if — if he couldn’t do that before, does that mean he’s getting better? Not that he has to! I know it’s okay if he’s never the way he used to be, I know he won’t ever be, but if he gets even a little better…”

Ethari quirked a bemused brow but laid a hand on her shoulder to soften the blow. “I think you already know the answer to what you’re asking,” he said gently.

Rayla wrapped her arms about herself, looking very small. “I know, but I want you to say it,” she whispered.

“Then, I’ll say it.” Ethari pulled her against him, tucking her head beneath his chin. “I don’t know if he’s getting better. I don’t know much of what’s happening in his head at all, not when he can’t open his mouth and tell me. We can’t know if he’ll ever be anything like the Runaan we knew, Rayla. The only thing we can do is trust that he’ll come back to us.”

Rayla sniffed and mumbled something against his collar.

“What was that?”

She pushed her nose out of his tunic and said, “But he promised.”

Ethari felt a tightness in his throat. He pulled Rayla closer. “I know he did.”

*

When Ethari woke the next morning, he woke with a yearning. For Runaan. That bare touch had left him with dreams he could not help replaying in his waking mind. Soft touches, wandering hands, fingers brushing lips and chin, tracing the lavender lines down his jaw and neck, Runaan’s eyes like liquid as his thumb pressed to the hollow of his throat. He recalled what it had been like to thread his fingers through silken locks, tender and loving, or to bury his hand at the base of his skull and  _ yank _ in a fit of passion. 

His cheeks heated as his thoughts derailed, and he could not help feeling guilty sitting there at Runaan’s bedside while he slumbered, thinking of him so. If subtle touch was unwanted, surely the joint of passion was even further from his mind. Still, he couldn’t very well help himself. Months deprived of anything resembling physical affection did things to an elf like him, naturally sensitive as he was. 

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the warm tinge to his thoughts. When that didn’t work, he stood up swiftly, the stool sliding back against the floor from the force of his motion. He stretched his arms overhead and noted the way Runaan stirred at the noise, immediately regretting his hasty movements. Something heavy blanketed Runaan’s features each time he woke, and it hurt to see it return after the peacefulness of his slumber. 

Runaan looked up, met his eyes and gave his almost-smile. Ethari melted. Grinning widely, he groped behind him for the stool and brought it again to the bedside, settling upon it with a light sigh. 

Runaan raised a brow at him, as if to ask why he’d stood up if he was just going to sit down again.

“I’m sorry for waking you,” Ethari said softly. “I can be loud as a banther, I know.” 

Runaan gave him a look.

Ethari crossed his arms with mock severity. “Well you don’t have to  _ agree  _ with me.” He nodded down to his chest. “I worked hard for these muscles, and last I heard you weren’t complaining about my size.” 

Here, a smirk flitted across Runaan’s lips and his gaze lidded with a look like warm honey. He gave Ethari a very deliberate once over. Ethari’s breath hitched, and his mind was suddenly filled with images of brushing lips and sweet caresses, his dreams come to fruition, and he tried very hard not to show his reaction. 

_Breathe, Ethari. He probably doesn’t even realize what he’s doing, or what you’re thinking, or that he looks like_ that —

Runaan pushed himself upright, still wearing that same expression, though now tinged with something like determination. Ethari held very still as he moved across the bed, face set, and paused in front of him. The air was charged with... _ something _ , as they looked at each other, Runaan’s face almost impassive save that deliberate intensity, brows lowering over eyes that sparked like static impressions.

Runaan leaned forward, and Ethari had to remind himself to breathe as warm fingers sought his mouth, tracing the corner of his lips and the bow. Runaan’s face was set in a mask of concentration, eyes following the motion of his fingers. He paused, glancing to Ethari’s chest, which had stilled with the breath caught high in his throat, and reached his other hand forward to rest against it. The air came to him suddenly, collecting in that point of contact, diaphragm expanding and loosening beneath Runaan’s hands.

Slowly, softly, Ethari brought a hand to rest against the one already on his cheek, fingers engulfing Runaan’s and curling until his nails brushed his own flesh. Runaan’s gaze was fire, and his touch heated, and Ethari turned his cheek into the touch until his lips brushed Runaan’s palm, and Runaan shuddered, eyes lidding but not averting from Ethari’s.

_ I love you _ , Ethari thought, hoping that the warmth in his gaze was enough to convey the ferocity of the truth. 

“You’re precious,” he whispered aloud when Runaan’s dubious expression did not shift. 

Runaan wavered, uncertainty flashing disturbance across his features like a stone dropped into a pool, ripples in the serene.

“You are,” Ethari insisted. 

The harshness of his tone did not pair with the words he was saying, but he could not help the anger spilling from him. He  _ hated  _ the thought of Runaan’s misgivings after so many long years of partnership, and he hated the thought that some external force beyond his ken had brought those tears in his psyche through the vilest means possible.

Runaan flinched, and Ethari realized his grip had tightened with the vitriol of his emotions. He immediately softened, loosening his hold so that his fingertips just barely made contact with the back of Runaan’s hand, offering a free means to escape should Runaan so choose. He seemed to consider it for a moment, flight warring with indecision, but he seemed to come to a conclusion, and Ethari watched the panic bleed from his expression in favor of quiet concern.

The look was so Runaan, he almost laughed.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, stroking his fingertips along Runaan’s knuckles. “I just can’t bear the thought that you think less of yourself after all that’s happened to you.” His gaze fell to the floor for a moment, brows furrowing, before returning to Runaan’s, earnest and stern. “I need you to understand that none of it’s your fault. You did the best you could, and I know you’re thinking to yourself that it doesn’t matter, because that wasn’t good enough, but it  _ does _ .” 

Again, that flicker of uncertainty, stronger now, as if to ask,  _ How can you know _ ?

“I know,” Ethari said, “because no one in their right mind —  _ no one _ — faults you more than you do yourself. You’re the most stubborn elf I know, and a judgemental ass sometimes, but you’re also kind and perceptive, and I know you’re a harsher critic for none but yourself.”

When Runaan’s face did not change, Ethari tried for logic. “If Rayla doesn’t fault you, how can you?” Still nothing, and Ethari grew frustrated. “Moon and  _ shadow _ , even Callum’s managed to dredge up pity alongside the anger! To remain this way is madness!”

Runaan’s hand slipped from his, eyes closing and face turning away, and Ethari reached for him again, motion violent before he  _ remembered  _ and gentled it at the last moment. 

“No,” he said, voice wavering traitorously, “you don’t get to shut me out, Runaan. Not more than you have to. You shut me out just fine as it is, and I can’t —” He brought a fist to his lips before they could spill any more of the vile things that crossed his mind and struggled not to cry. 

Runaan blew out a heavy breath and thumbed at the damp clinging to Ethari’s lashes before it could fall. He seemed troubled, but he rejoined their hands, tugging at Ethari’s until he softened and allowed his hand to follow the motion. Runaan brought their joined hands to his lips, mimicking Ethari’s earlier posture with something like apology in his eyes. 

Ethari huffed a watery breath. “If you didn’t want me to cry, that’s not the way to do it,” he croaked. 

Runaan smiled against his knuckles. 

*

They decided to go downstairs for breakfast, early enough that neither Callum nor Rayla were awake. Ethari thought that for the best; Runaan might accustom to his new surroundings in quiet.

It seemed his worry was misplaced. Though Runaan wasn’t quite himself yet, the events of the previous night seemed to have eased something within him, and he sat at the table with lax posture and easy breaths. The move downstairs did not look to have stressed him, in fact he seemed quite happy to be in the comfort of his living quarters again, with the fresh morning light spilling through the window and across his face. 

Ethari moved to the kitchen, which was broad and unblocked by wall or obstructive doorway. The long marble counter was the centerpiece of the area, crafted by Ethari’s own hand so that he might watch his family interact while he cooked up their favorites. He set about the task of locating ingredients, eggs and flour and sugar for dessert cakes, olives, various cheeses, fruit for the side, coffee beans to be ground and steeped. 

A few minutes into his preparations, there was the very distinct sound of a door opening and closing shut, and Ethari could not help drawing in a breath, his movements becoming shorter, sharper. He tried to look casual when Rayla walked in, but his smile was tight and he knew it.

Rayla, dragging feet and bleary-eyed as she’d never been as a youngster, seemed not to notice, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn. 

“Good morning,” she said, then paused at the scene in front of her.

Ethari in the kitchen as he’d not been since  _ before _ . Runaan seated at his old spot at the table, the far left corner, back to the wall and face to the window, smiling at her unabashedly.

Rayla, bless her, did not stop to ask questions, nor show any puzzlement in the slightest. She set aside whatever curiosity might normally make her mouth run and let her joy shine through. She walked to Runaan with a skip to her step, stopping before him with an almost imperceptible pause before reaching to engulf him in a light embrace.

Runaan did not flinch. 

She pulled away from him and beamed at Ethari. Ethari responded in kind and held up a bowl of half-made batter.

“Mix the dry with the wet?” he asked, and she agreed, and so they worked side by side while Runaan watched, and everything was glorious for a wondrous few minutes.

When Callum cautiously poked his head around the corner, Ethari was not nearly so composed as he’d been with Rayla’s intrusion. It was a subject he’d been dodging around for the past month and a half, and despite the odd mention, he was not even sure Runaan was aware Callum occupied the house with them. 

His heart flew to his throat and his eyes flicked to Runaan, apprehensively watching for his reaction. Runaan appeared puzzled for a long moment, emotions churning on his face, shock, confusion, apprehension, before stilling with a tired sigh. He shook his head once, blew the hair from his face, and gave a sardonic wave.

Callum returned the gesture awkwardly. 

“That’s it?” Rayla whispered. “No meltdown?”

“I think he’s beyond those,” Ethari muttered, surprised but pleased, his frantic heart rate slowing at the realization that perhaps his poor coping skills would not result in any “unfortunate mishaps” that would put Callum out of order for the next five to seven business days. 

Callum shifted on his feet. “So, can I come in, then?”

Ethari smiled and gestured him in.“Please. You can help Rayla with the batter.”

Callum nodded, all too happy to get out of the doorway and occupy his twitching hands. There was a long moment of silence before Ethari tired of it and declared in loud tones that it was time to recount the story of “that one time Lain put worms in the salad.” Rayla groaned, saying she couldn’t bear to hear her parents spoken of in such a manner, Runaan rolled his eyes but smiled, and Callum blinked and asked, “The time he did what?”

“You see,” Ethari said, “there was a hard rain one autumn, and all the worms were flushed out of the ground, but the frost was due the next morning, and it got Lain worrying about their health —”

“So he put them in salad? Like, that you eat?”

“Not after he put them in,” Ethari said. “That would be counterproductive.”

Thus, he launched into a rather ridiculous story about Lain’s tendency to pick up helpless animals and beg his friends to foster them when he ran out of room — apparently both the shadowpaw and moonstrider in Ethari’s possession were thanks to Lain and his overeager sense of empathy. 

They continued their preparations even as the story concluded and shifted into another. Ethari spilled some eggs into a pan and moved on to cutting the fruits.

Callum moved away from the counter and slipped in beside Rayla under the guise of reaching for the flour above her head.

“How’s he doing?” he asked in a low voice.

Rayla stopped spilling the batter into the ramekins and shot a glance at Ethari. His story had petered off into quiet humming.

“Better, I think,” she responded. “He’s down here, isn’t he?” 

“I guess,” Callum said, groping at the bag, but he overestimated the length of his reach, and it slipped from his fingers. Rayla caught the flour before it could hit the floor and create a very unwanted mess. Callum gave her a grateful smile and waited while she flipped the strings open and left him to coat the remaining tins. 

“I just thought he’d be better by now,” he continued under his breath. “It’s been over three weeks.”

“That’s not very long.”

“Isn’t it? I cried for years after my mum died, but I was still up and moving a few days later. I was still  _ talking _ .” 

Rayla sighed and glanced over her shoulder again. Ethari was still chattering away, Runaan silent but the set of his shoulders and the strength of his gaze made it clear he was listening.

“When I was young, I knew a girl whose mother killed her two brothers and her father.”

“ _ What _ ? What’s that got to do with —” 

“Because we found her two days later over her mother’s corpse. I don't recall her speaking once in the rest of the years I knew her.”

“That’s  _ awful _ .” Callum drew in a breath, struggling to keep his voice quiet. “Why are you telling me this?” 

Rayla was quiet for a moment, focused on evening the batter in the tins. She  _ tsked  _ and shook her head just slightly. “My point is,” she said, “that people cope in different ways. What’s normal for you isn’t normal for someone else. What hurts one person might be nothing to you.” 

“ _ Rayla _ . That makes it sound like I don’t care, or, or that what happened wasn’t terrible —”

“I’m not criticizing you,” she interrupted. “I’m just trying to say that there’s no ‘right’ way for these things to go.” She nudged him with her hip. “He’ll be better when he wants to be.”

Callum’s brow furrowed as he mulled over her words. It made sense, he thought, like something Ezran would say. 

“All done here?”

Ethari’s voice sounded over his shoulder, and he jumped. 

“Yes.”

Rayla spoke suddenly from his other side, and he turned to look at her, glaring. She ignored him and proffered the tray with a bright smile. Ethari chuckled and took the tray from her. He walked to the oven, drew the door open with a flourish. “These will take a while,” he said, kicking the door shut with a foot. “We can eat the rest of our meal while we wait and have them for dessert.”  
When they were seating themselves, Ethari invited Callum to sit beside him. When Callum shot him a startled look, he only shrugged and gave a subtle gesture to Rayla, who had scooted her chair over to rest near atop Runaan’s. “They need this,” he said, and Callum nodded in understanding. 

It was nice like that. Messiness aside, all four of them seated together like family, and the black stains of death could almost be forgotten, the clawed marks it imprinted on the psyche, the smell of it, the taste. 

When the smell of cinnamon and cloves permeated the air, and the oven chimed — an enchantment and Ethari’s idea — Ethari retreated from the table. He set the cakes on the table along with the appropriate silverware and offered to serve. Callum and Runaan settled for one each, though Callum enjoyed the flavor and asked for another. Rayla and Ethari started themselves off with two, but some spark set off between them and they proceeded to stuff their mouths full with the remaining dozen, each working to chew faster, swallow quicker, than the other. It was hard to do while laughing — eating, that is — and much of the cakes ended up on both the floor and the table in a mess of crumbs. 

Callum spared Runaan a glance, wondering what he would think of the mess, but he found Runaan was already looking at him. His breath caught for a moment, anticipating reprimand, before he noticed the mischievous gleam in his eye. Runaan side-eyed Ethari and inclined his chin with a barely-there smirk. 

Callum blinked a few times, sure he was misinterpreting, but Runaan repeated the gesture and he was forced to acknowledge the possibility that the impossible  _ was  _ indeed happening. 

Callum shot him an uncertain look.  _ Are you serious?  _

Runaan raised a brow, and Callum was left wondering how someone could convey so much in a single look. The amusement had not faded, but it was paired with an aged cynicism, a contemptuous challenge of character, both Callum’s and his own.

His first reaction was anger. This was the murderer of his father, granted stunted and nothing like the intimidating figure he’d cut in the moonlight all those years ago, but still, imposing upon him as if he held the moral high ground. It was infuriating and arrogant and — and… bespoke of a deeper scorn than what was overtly there. Runaan’s critical gaze was not of one looking to propagate their personal agenda but that of a scared animal, looking to lash out before any harm could be dealt. It bespoke of a vulnerability and malleability to his character that Callum had not thought him capable of.

It made him feel… well, pitying wasn’t the right word, but perhaps he could say he understood Runaan a bit better. 

He was broken from his trance when Rayla’s hand clocked his on its way back to her mouth. 

“Six,” she squalled around her mouthful, spewing crumbs everywhere. 

Apparently, she and Ethari hadn’t finished their game. Speaking of —

Callum looked back to Runaan and offered him a solemn nod, a truce, before his features broke out into a smirk. He always enjoyed a good prank. 

Runaan, for his part, seemed mildly surprised, brows rising high before settling into a similar expression of mischief. His shoulder did not move visibly, but his fingers rose above the table nonetheless, discreetly folding in towards his palm. Callum waited until he’d dropped his third finger, then sprang from his seat to give the tabletop in front of Rayla a zealous pounding. 

Runaan took the quiet road of treachery, reaching beneath the table and ghosting his knuckles across Ethari’s ribs. Both these actions were enough, if not more than, to startle their two cake-eating companions and result in a dual coughing fit, Rayla hacking like a cat and Ethari’s struggle to keep the chewed remnants of cake within his mouth. The cake won.

Rayla pointed to the mess of crumbs on the tabletop and wheezed, “Th-that’s only five. I win.”

“N-not f — _ ack _ .” Ethari drew in a breath, then began coughing all over again.

Callum spared a look for Runaan and startled to find him wearing an expansive grin, smug as a cat. 

Well.

Apparently his father’s murderer had a playful streak. That was...good to know.

Ethari finally got his breathing under control and cleared his throat. He pointed an accusatory finger at Runaan. “That was interference,” he said. To Rayla, he added, “I should get the point just for his meddling.”

“No, that’s not how points work,” she said. “They don’t just  _ appear _ . You have to  _ earn  _ them, which I  _ did _ . You’re just sore and looking for an easy out.” 

Ethari shrugged and grinned. “Can’t lie to my own daughter.”

Callum listened to their banter with half an ear, but his mind was elsewhere. 

When he looked into the kitchen an hour ago, he hadn’t expected Runaan to  _ be  _ there, let alone to encourage interaction. The Runaan he remembered standing on the ramparts two years ago had been sharp and distant, a professional, an elf with a duty. The Runaan sitting before him was a very different person, softer, certainly, but also more open somehow. It was obvious, if not in speech than in his bearing, his willingness to let Callum sit at his table, beside his husband, no less, with little more than a sigh. 

The change was subtle but noticeable, and when put beside the fact that Runaan had not been a member of the world for long months, the implications left a sour taste in his mouth. From what little he’d gleaned from Rayla and from his own inferences, he knew Runaan was duty-bound to the point of fanaticism. His honor was so deeply etched in his behaviors, it was the foundation of his character. Everything about him, his thoughts, his likes and dislikes, hinged on that fundamental truth, and it was with no small amount of horror that he realized the person before him was sorely lacking in that area.

He was still cultured, yes, was conscious of his posture and manner and still held that gleam in his eye of someone who knew their mind and would speak it, but his prior certainty was gone. Callum could not honestly say he cared for Runaan, or even liked him, but no one deserved such a devastating loss. The faith that had allowed him to dismiss his daughter and the peace she held in her arms was the very faith that he had built his higher traits upon, his courage and his wits. All of that was gone now, and that was a bittersweet thought indeed.

*

“You seemed to enjoy yourself,” Ethari said slyly.

Runaan gave him a look of fond exasperation but squeezed his hand in confirmation.

Ethari turned to him at the top of the stairs. “I’m glad,” he murmured. “I’d begun to worry —” 

He cut off with a wince.

Runaan, momentarily startled at his serious tone, shook his head on a smile and flexed his fingers again. 

Ethari smiled weakly. “I’m sorry,” he said as Runaan led him down the hall towards their bedroom. “I shouldn’t pressure you. I know you’ll do everything in your own time, and it’s unfair to project my own expectations —”

Runaan opened the door, pushed it shut behind him and stilled Ethari with a look. He stepped in close, and Ethari was reminded of just how large Runaan’s presence was when he wished it to be. His breath caught and sputtered back to life like a faulty machine. 

“I —”

Fingers brushed his jaw, and he quieted on his exhale. Runaan was watching him when his thumb traced the swell of his lip and came to rest at its corner. His gaze was live, electric. In the sudden slide of his belly, Ethari’s tongue flicked out, inadvertently brushing Runaan’s flesh, and Runaan’s eyes flashed with intent. His chest expanded on a deep inhale, and Ethari’s nerves swelled into panic.

“I’m sorry. Are you alright —”

He blinked, arms flailing for a moment as he was pulled off balance. He caught himself seconds later and found himself in an embrace, Runaan’s chin tucked against his neck, heart thudding beside his own. 

Ethari felt his stomach drop, expand, and  _ soar, _ as Runaan breathed a single word against his flesh:

“ _ Yes _ .”


	4. Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am sorry this took so long! my only excuse is other fics? *nervous laughter* ahem

“Tell me about it.” 

It was near midnight, and the moonlight filtered in through the open window in slatted rays of silver. Runaan rolled over onto his side and faced Ethari, the bed creaking in protest. They were not quite touching, but their hands had been interlocked since the morning and neither had let go. 

“Why?” 

He had to clear his throat twice before the word was comprehensible, and even still his voice was dry and the syllables scraped on the way out. 

Ethari raised his shoulders in a bare shrug. “Because all this time I’ve only been able to speculate. My husband disappeared for two years and returned a voiceless ghost. Moon knows what he had to have done to you to make you so, but I still won’t accept rage into my heart lightly. I would hear it all from your own mouth so that I can at least assuage my hate with reason.”

Runaan nodded but frowned. “Aye,” he rasped. “What do you want to know?”

Ethari scooted close enough that Runaan could feel his heat permeating the thin cloth of his nightshirt. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Runaan. You shouldn’t have to suffer further on my account.”

Runaan squeezed his hand. “I want to.” 

After another long moment, Ethari nodded. “Would you tell me what he did to you?”

Runaan swallowed and turned his gaze to the ceiling, his jaw tightening. “Everything,” he whispered. “I was not a person. I was a tool.” 

There was the physical aspect, of course. An elf was an abundant farm of magical components, horns to be filed, hair to be shorn, skin to be peeled. Viren had even taken a swab of saliva once; that had been particularly demeaning. In that way, it made no sense to kill him. Elves were rare, Moonshadows the rarest, and a live one was stones more potent than a dead one. As he liked to say, Viren was nothing if not a pragmatist.

But besides all that, and the physical pain, Runaan had endured the grueling dichotomy of shame and his own dignity. Held up by nothing but the chains on his wrists, it was near impossible to retain his esteem, even one so strong willed as he had once been. In the coin it was worse. There, he didn’t even have the illusion of potential release, nothing but his own labyrinthine thoughts and the tormenting circles played by his Doubt. 

He wasn’t sure how to explain all that to Ethari, but it seemed he didn’t have to. 

“He hurt you,” Ethari said. “Beyond the body.”

“Yes.”

A hiss from grit teeth. “Moon forgive me my hatred, but next time I see him, I’ll cut that bastard’s bollocks off.” 

Runaan managed a weak chuckle. “I doubt he still has them.” 

“What do you mean?”

“When I was imprisoned, he demanded I tell him of the mirror kept in Avizandum’s possession.”

Ethari took a moment to understand, but when he did, a slow, vicious smile spread across his face. He laughed. “ _ Aaravos. _ I can think of no better punishment for a snake than to die by slow poison.” He pressed a gentle kiss to the back of Runaan’s palm. “Why, thank you, love. You’ve made my night ten times better.” 

Runaan smiled in response. “I’m glad.”

They were quiet for a long moment, the night sounds outside breaking the heavy silence into something almost comfortable. 

“What else?” Runaan prompted, which earned him a startled look from Ethari. Runaan merely shrugged. They would have to broach the subject at one point. He wasn’t feeling particularly jittery, and Ethari’s warm was soothing rather than discomfiting; really, this was as good a time as any.

Ethari said, “I’m...curious. What was it like in the — in between?” 

“My prison,” Runaan corrected gently. “It was exactly that. My body was captive, yes, but also my mind. I could not escape it.” He grimaced. “Similar to the night terrors I had as a child.” 

Ethari’s brow furrowed. “Paralysis? I would have thought you could move. The spirit world is meant to be another realm, not a cage.” 

“I doubt that’s what it was,” Runaan said. “Dark magic holds no connection to our ancestors. It does not value life.” 

Ethari sighed heavily. “I’m so sorry, love — have I told you that?”

“Repeatedly.” 

“Not enough, obviously. You still feel guilty. I can see it.” 

“Yes.” Runaan saw no point in denying it. 

Ethari worried at his lip, which Runaan immediately noticed.

“What?” 

Ethari went at it a moment longer before looking at him. “I was just thinking... Would you maybe be interested in seeing someone about it? We would go together, obviously — or not, if that’s not something you’re comfortable with —” 

Runaan silenced him with a finger brushed across his arm. “I would very much like to,” he said. “And I would be honored if you accompanied me.” 

“ _ You  _ would be honored?” Ethari let out a giggle, which quickly turned into giddy laughter. “I’m sorry, it’s just” — He wiped at his eyes, and Runaan could not tell if the moisture collected there was from mirth or from grief — “it’s been so long with  _ nothing _ from you, and now you’re offering me  _ everything.  _ How am I supposed to feel about that? What does it mean?” 

Runaan unlatched his fingers from Ethari’s and brought them to the seam of his jaw. “That we’re healing.” 

*

“When do you think you’ll talk to Rayla?”

It was noontime and close to the autumnal harvest, and Ethari had brought a great plate of squash and meats in celebration. Perhaps Runaan would not be able to attend the festival, but that didn’t mean he had to miss out on the food. 

Runaan paused with his mouth half-stuffed with bread. It had been a week since he’d first spoken, and he had yet to brave the dangers outside these four walls. He chewed for longer than he had to in an effort to buy himself time. He swallowed, took a drink of water, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Finally, he met Ethari’s gaze, who had not pushed but was watching with a knowing look. 

“I hadn’t thought about i —”

“ _ Don’t lie to me _ .” 

Ethari thumped his fist on the wall, and Runaan flinched. Ethari seemed to wilt all at once, emotions flitting across his face like quicksilver fish. 

“I’m sorry,” he said tightly. “But you’ve kept me in the dark so long, and now you don’t have to anymore. Just — don’t, please.” 

Runaan stayed quiet.

Ethari’s hand settled heavy in his lap, and he looked at it like it was a thing that didn’t belong. “I shouldn’t blame you,” he said lowly. “I  _ don’t _ , not really. But there’s a part of me that can’t help feeling hurt that you were quiet for so long. That I wasn’t good enough for you. That maybe, if I were a better partner, you’d have trusted me enough to come through faster.” 

The silence stretched on, and Ethari shrank down further.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” he whispered.

“You’re wrong,” Runaan echoed, but his words felt hollow. He stared at the half-empty tray in his lap, the colorful array of food that Ethari had picked purely for his enjoyment. “I carry this shame within myself, Ethari,” he said. “You shouldn’t share the burden.”

“Yes, I  _ should _ .” 

Again, that anger.

Runaan looked up wearily. 

“I should,” Ethari repeated. “That’s what family does. We support each other. You were always there when we needed you. Perhaps it’s our turn now.”

“This is where you tell me to speak with Rayla.”

Ethari nodded. “This is where I tell you to speak with Rayla.” 

Runaan sighed.

*

“It’s good to see you awake.”

Rayla picked at the fabric on the edge of the bed. She sat on the far corner of the bed. She wouldn’t look at him. It hurt.

“I’ve been awake for a while,” he noted. He spoke softly, feeling like  _ she  _ was the vulnerable one between the two of them. 

“No, you weren’t.” She gave him a furtive glance before hurriedly dropping her gaze to the sheets again. She picked harder. “Your eyes were open, but you weren’t  _ awake _ .”

He sighed. “I was there, Rayla. I was listening, and I heard everything.”

“And...what did you hear?”

“I heard you express regret for what you did. I heard your guilt.” 

She caught her breath and looked at him.

“You shouldn’t be,” he said. “You were a  _ child _ , and I should not have expected a child to bear the weight of a country on her shoulders. I should have known that.”

Her expression shuttered again, and she swallowed. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Is that — that’s it?”

“No, I —” 

Runaan’s throat closed for half a moment, but he drew in a breath and continued. “I should have  _ done  _ better. To say you were a child, that was my excuse while I was trapped. Anger was how I survived; I breathed on it. But now...I feel differently. You had a point from the beginning, Rayla. I was just too scared to stray from my path.”

“You… You mean that?” 

He nodded. “Of course. I won’t lie to you. Not anymore.”

He saw her swallow. “I’d like very much to hug you,” she said with a bare smile. 

Runaan laughed and hauled himself over the bed to join her in an enthusiastic embrace.

*

“I spoke with her,” he said.

“Yes.” Ethari looked at the door and back, as if trailing the path that light steps had taken down the hallway. “She seemed...pleased.” 

Runaan smiled as Ethari approached the bedside. “And you seem surprised.” 

Ethari dropped onto the corner of the bed, the fabric sinking beneath his marked weight. “She hasn’t exactly been  _ happy  _ these past weeks. She’s been restless since you arrived. I think she’s guilty.” 

Runaan sighed. “Yes, she admitted as much. I tried to explain to her she has nothing to feel ashamed of, but I’m not sure it went through.” His brow furrowed. “She’s more stubborn than I remember.” 

“Oo, I wonder where she gets that from?” 

Runaan let his features mold to a smile and prodded Ethari in the ribs. “You say that like it’s all me.” 

“No, I suppose there’s Tiadrin, too.”

Runaan spun to face him. “You —” 

Ethari was smiling. 

Runaan settled back with a breathy laugh. “You’ve not forgotten how to tease, I see.” 

“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Ethari said. “Least of all how to best  _ you _ .” He said it with a smile, but his tone was tinged with melancholy, as if reminiscing on darker times. It sobered him, just a bit, and he thought, not for the first time, how Ethari must have felt when he watched that lotus sink beneath the surface and realize he had lost not one, but all, of his family. 

“Ethari,” Runaan murmured. “I don’t believe I’ve told you how sorry I am.” 

Ethari’s breath hitched, but he caught himself with a cleared throat. “W-what for?” 

Runaan scooted closer, close enough that they could touch. “You know,” he said, “but I’ll say it out loud if you want me to.” 

Ethari’s breaths had gone shallow and his eyes pricked with the force of his anxiety; he couldn’t bring himself to speak. 

Runaan bowed his head as if he’d made his proclamation out loud. “Alright, then,” he said softly. “I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m sorry for making a promise I knew, at best, was unreliable, improbable at worst. I’m sorry for giving you falsehoods when I should have been giving you truths.”

“Runaan —” 

Ethari choked on his words, reaching. Runaan took his hands but did not stop speaking. 

“I’m sorry for what I did to our daughter. I’m sorry for breaking her so thoroughly, she saw no path but redemption. I’m sorry for the needles distance I put between us those last few months, when really I should have been pleading your aid. I’m sorry for doubting you, and belittling you, and making claims that held no merit. I’m sorry. I’m  _ sorry. _ ” 

His breath hitched in his throat, and he realized he was crying. Soft, quiet tears, deep enough that he hadn’t noticed their approach until they’d pounced upon him. 

Ethari’s hands held his so hard, it hurt. His eyes were liquid, but his face was loose rather than pinched, open and honest, and his tears were moondrops on his cheeks. “I’d like very much to kiss you,” he breathed.

Runaan swallowed and nodded, and Ethari slid forward, drawn in the phosphourent pull they’d garnered between them.

“I missed you,” he whispered, the barest of breaths, and Runaan could feel the words against his lips. He smiled dazzlingly, for it did not revolt him as it once might have, rather warmed him pleasantly and settled a low buzz in his stomach. 

“And I you,” he repeated, “but I’m back now, and I don't plan on going anywhere.”


End file.
